“Shut yer holes, maggots!” shouted a voice. It was the warden. He stood on the floor of the cavern, banging his giant key ring against a round soot-black cauldron. “Gruel time!” A group of four soldiers had entered the cavern; two carried the wooden spit from which the cauldron hung, two stood guard by the door. The warden walked over to where the giant ladder was leaning up against the cavern wall and grabbed a pole, of similar height, on the top of which was tethered a large wooden ladle.
“Get yer bowls ready!” came the next shouted instruction.
The prisoners grumbled and shifted in their barred enclosures, causing the array of cages to twist and swing like ornaments on a Christmas tree after it’s been shaken. From between the bars of the cages emerged single arms, blackened with dirt, holding wide tin bowls. Curtis looked over to his side and noticed for the first time that his cage, too, came with a tin bowl, and he picked it up and held it out of the cage like his fellow prisoners. The warden dipped the ladle end of the pole into the cauldron and, carefully paying out the length of the wooden shaft into the air, filled each of the prisoners’ proffered bowls, one by one. A little of the gruel splashed onto Curtis’s hand as it was poured, and he flinched at the expectation that it would be hot; he was chagrined to discover that it was pretty tepid.
After the warden had finished, he put the ladle pole back in its resting place (with the ladle end down and planted in the dirt, Curtis couldn’t help but notice) and ushered the soldiers from the room. The warden, too, exited the cavern, though not before turning and issuing a sardonic “Bon appétit!” to his prisoners.
Curtis looked deep into his bowl; the “gruel” appeared to be a pale milky broth of some sort in which bobbed a flotilla of foodlike objects. Curtis picked at one such object with a finger; it appeared to be the cartilage of some indeterminable beast.
Seamus, in the cage above, hollered down at Curtis, “Don’t look at it too closely, man! Just eat the stuff.”
Curtis looked up and winced before carrying the bowl to his lips and taking a sizable slug of the stuff. It was more disgusting than anything he had tasted in his life—and he’d had the displeasure of tasting his mother’s collard greens. It wasn’t so much the taste that offended, however, but the appreciable lack of taste—it allowed the textures of the floating cartilage and who-knows-what to really come forward on the palate. Curtis gagged loudly. The bandits, who had apparently been waiting to hear his reaction, erupted into laughter.
“Get used to it, kid!” one shouted.
“Nothing like home cooking, huh, Outsider?” yelled another.
“Bleagh!” said Curtis, setting the bowl down on the cage floor. “What is this stuff?”
“Squirrel brain, pigeon’s feet, skunk tendons—all served up in a healthy broth of spoiled milk,” shouted Angus.
Dmitri, the coyote, couldn’t help but intercede. “It ain’t so bad—I’ve had worse in the mess hall, believe me!”
Curtis frowned at his leftovers. “Might just hold off,” he said to no one in particular. “Not really hungry right now.” He sat back against the bars and gazed out to the cavern floor below, listening to the ravenous slurpings from his neighboring cages. God forbid, he thought, I should stay in here long enough to get used to that stuff.
To Curtis’s great surprise, a voice suddenly sounded from somewhere inside his cage. “You gonna finish that, then?”
Curtis leapt up, scanning the cage for the owner of the voice. In the far side of the enclosure, standing on his hind legs, was a tall and wiry gray rat. He was licking his chops and rubbing his spindly fingers together in anticipation. “Well, are you?”
“Who are you?” demanded Curtis. “And what are you doing in my cage?”
Seamus, above, cried down between mouthfuls, “That’s Septimus. Septimus the rat. Septimus, meet Curtis, our new friend.”
Cormac added onto the introduction, “He’s a loiterer. Not even a prisoner. Hangs out here of his own volition.”
Septimus made a dramatic bow. “How do you do?” he said.
“Very well, thanks,” said Curtis. “And no, I don’t think I’m going to finish it.”
The rat took a step forward and extended a hand. “Would you mind if I did?”
Curtis thought for a moment—troubled at the idea of voluntarily sharing food with a rat, of all creatures—but finally capitulated. “Go ahead.”
Septimus cracked a smile and smoothed back the matted fur on his head. “Don’t mind if I do,” he said, before diving headlong into the bowl of gruel, lapping it up with a ferocious intensity
Having finished, Septimus let out a diminutive belch before reclining lazily against the bars of Curtis’s cage. He put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. “Aaaah,” he said. “Nothing like relaxing after a good meal.” After a moment, he cracked an eyelid and looked over at Curtis. “So what are you in here for?”
Curtis sat back down. He had to admit, it was nice having some company in the cage. “I’m a turncoat, I guess,” he said. “A deserter, of sorts. I saw what the Governess is going to do and I couldn’t let it happen. So she threw me in here.”
“Ooh,” said Septimus. “That’s pretty bad.” He paused before saying, “What’s she going to do?”
“She’s going to sacrifice my friend’s baby brother to the ivy so she can control it and take over the whole country.”
A collective murmur arose from the surrounding cages. “What?” one of the bandits whispered.
“Oh,” said Septimus, “that is bad. Ivy, huh? Evil stuff.” Another pause. “Is it English ivy? Or the other stuff? I can’t remember; I think one is more invasive than the other—”
He was interrupted by Cormac, who’d been listening in. “Septimus, if the ivy needs to consume a human child to become all-powerful, it’s safe to assume it’s the invasive stuff.”
Septimus nodded gravely. “Tenacious plant, that ivy.”
“And let’s not forget the tenacious WITCH whose plan it is to feed it human blood and make it do her bidding!” shouted Seamus, casting his food bowl aside with a metallic clunk. “That evil woman is going to get what’s coming to her, believe you me!”
Dmitri the coyote sounded from below. “And what are you gonna do about it now, all locked up in your oversized birdcage?”
Seamus leapt up and shook the bars of his cage, shouting, “Don’t think you’ll be saved too, dog! Don’t think your litter at home are going to be spared when that ivy goes crawling over the forest. She’s using you, that Dowager! She’ll cast you all aside as soon as she’s got what she wants.”
Dmitri grumbled something in response and turned his back on Seamus, scraping a paw idly over the dregs of his bowl.
But Seamus’s temper had been sparked, and he began shaking at the bars of his cage. “Free Wildwood!” he shouted, then louder: “FREE WILDWOOD!”
The other bandits joined in, hitting their tin bowls against the wooden bars. The cavern was alive with the chaotic sound, the metallic clang echoing through the chamber. Suddenly, the warden appeared at the doorway below with a pair of armed guards.
“Keep it down in here, maggots!” he yelled. “Or we’ll start using ye for target practice.” One of the accompanying guards, as if to grant credence to the warden’s threat, raised his rifle to his eye and began aiming it indiscriminately at each dangling cage.
Septimus the rat jumped up from his reclining position and scrambled up the side of Curtis’s cage. Grabbing hold of the rope, he looked back down at Curtis and whispered, “This is where I take my leave! Catch you later!” And he was gone up the rope.
One of the bandits, concealed in his cage, yelled a muffled insult to the warden.
“That’s done it!” shouted the stout warden. “No breakfast tomorrow!”
The bandits groaned loudly in mock protest.
“And no lunch!”
Finally, the prisoners fell quiet, the only sound being the creaking of the cages on their ropes. “All right, then, light
s out!” The two guards separated and began snuffing out the torches that lined the cavern wall until the chamber was consumed in darkness. “Good night, maggots!” shouted the warden, and he was gone again.
Once he’d left, Cormac put his face against the bars and addressed the prisoners from his cage. “Mark my words, lads,” he said in a raspy whisper, “as long as Brendan, our King and comrade, walks this earth, Wildwood will be free. I swear it.”
The prisoners responded with a quiet cheer.
“He’s comin’ for us, boys,” hissed Cormac. “He’s comin’ for us and we’ll burn and bludgeon our way out of here. Mark my words. And no dog soldier or Dowager Queen will stand in our way.”
CHAPTER 16
The Flight; A Meeting on the Bridge
Prue was flying.
The feeling was incredible.
Prue was flying. The feeling was incredible.
She’d flown in planes, but that had been a sterile sensation, a mediated experience that gave the illusion of flying—replete with the jarring complaints of gravity and the television-screen-sized windows broadcasting pictures of fluffy clouds and miniaturized cities. It was nothing compared to this, this true feeling of soaring: the dome of sky above her, the verdant sprawl of the forest below. Her arms were now safely wrapped around the General’s fleecy neck, and her shoes had found footing at the joint where the eagle’s tail feathers fanned out from his body. She could feel his powerful back muscles heaving and contracting with every wing beat, and the cool, damp morning air assaulted her skin, blowing her hair straight back and bringing tears to her eyes. The dawning light was pervasive now, crowning the tops of the fir trees with a golden glow. The horizon burned rosy and bright, reflecting off a bank of clouds in the distance, perhaps heralding a coming storm.
Below them, dotting the treetops, was a multitude of nests, large and small. Some were elaborate, multileveled affairs connecting the topmost branches of a given tree with a series of nests, aeries, and landing platforms. Many of the nests looked like common robin’s nests, all straw and small branches, while others spanned whole boughs, their walls built of sizable tree limbs, their floors plastered with a smoothed gray mud. Several cedars towered above their neighboring firs, and Prue could see small cities of swallows’ nests built against the bark of the trees, a dizzying network of little mud abodes. It was breakfast time, and from Prue’s high vantage she could see the little holes, the entryways, to these nests crowded with the outstretched beaks of expectant chicks. As the morning progressed, she noticed that the air above this veritable metropolis of nests was growing more and more active as birds of all size and feather darted in and out of the massive blanket of trees, carrying worms and beetles, twigs and grass to succor their demanding broods.
“It’s beautiful!” shouted Prue.
“The best way to see the Principality!” the General shouted back. The high wind whipped at them noisily; it was difficult to talk above the din. “From the air!”
Suddenly, the General banked left and carved a diagonal line down to skirt the tops of the trees. Prue felt her stomach drop. She gave a yelp as she felt the green newborn shoots of these gargantuan conifers brush her knees. A flock of adolescent peregrines, out for a morning flight, fell into the General’s draft and began chasing him for sport, wheeling in and out of his flight path, badgering him to go faster and try to lose them.
“On an important mission, lads!” he shouted. They wouldn’t have it; they continued to toy with him until he took a deep breath and, warning Prue to “hold on!” he corkscrewed up into the air, briefly stalling in midflight, and plummeted headfirst into the dense foliage of the trees. Prue screamed. She clutched his neck feathers tightly. Before he got too low, however, he expertly pulled from the tailspin and began flying through the thick jungle of tree boughs, masterfully weaving through the branches that hampered their way. The peregrines tried to keep up as best they could, but barely five minutes had passed before they were forced to give up pursuit. Once their pursuers had been lost, the eagle shifted his tail feathers and soared upward, out of the thick of the tree boughs. When they returned to their initial altitude, Prue saw something extraordinary. “Wow!” she exclaimed.
“The Royal Nest,” explained the General, guessing the object of her amazement.
Before them towered a single tree, a majestic Douglas fir, which dwarfed its neighboring trees by sheer size. The trunk, even at this lofty height, was the width of a small house—Prue could only guess what its width would be at ground level—and the topmost branches soared fifty feet—easily!—above the nearest tree. The most extraordinary thing about the tree, though, was the impressive network of aeries that filled the high branches. An immense series of smaller nests occupied some of the lower branches, each inhabited by droves of sparrows and finches; above them, a smaller number of larger nests, these sheltering flocks of hawks and falcons—all leading up to a single, massive roost crowning the topmost branch, the pinnacle of the tree. It was solidly thirty feet in diameter and made of a diverse collection of every source of vegetation imaginable: fir boughs and raspberry brambles, ivy vines and coltsfoot stalks, flowering nasturtium and maple vines. The bowl of the nest was caked in a smooth layer of mud and looked to be the most inviting nest one could imagine—but, alas, it remained empty.
“The Crown Prince’s own roost,” explained the eagle solemnly.
“What will you do now Owl Rex is gone?” shouted Prue over the roar of the wind. They circled the complex of the Royal Nest a few times before resuming their northward flight.
“His nest will be tended and kept till he is returned. If South Wood refuses to do so, however, it will be war.” The eagle arched his wings back and picked up speed as the city of nests below them grew sparser within the trees.
Prue was troubled by the eagle’s response. “But how will you fight two wars at once? Assuming that the coyotes keep attacking you from the North?” she hollered. “And what will happen to Owl Rex?”
“We have no choice, Prue,” was the eagle’s loud reply. The General heaved a few wing beats, bringing them to a higher altitude; the blanket of dark green below them fell away, and Prue could feel her ears pop.
“Keep an eye peeled for hazards,” came the General’s instruction. “We’re crossing over into Wildwood.”
Prue squinted and scanned the crowns of the trees; here, the forest seemed wilder, untamed by any single colony. In the understory, deciduous maple and alder trees fought for dominance of the canopy alongside their larger coniferous cousins, the hemlock, fir, and cedar trees. They seemed packed closer together, their growth unhindered in this wild country; indeed, trees were not the only vegetation that sought the concentrated light at this height—fantastic vines of ivy had clambered to the top of several unfortunate maple trees, seemingly suffocating their hosts in the attempt to reach the blue of the sky.
“Looks clear!” shouted Prue.
As they flew on, the trees began to grow taller and wider, and they overshadowed the lesser deciduous trees around them. The tops of these trees seemed to scratch at the sky, the wind swaying their high branches. The General was forced to ascend even higher, and Prue could feel her lungs beginning to struggle for air at this elevation. From the new altitude, she could see how the dense patchwork of trees below them stretched on, seemingly endless, into the horizon. The borders of the Wood appeared impossibly vast. Forgetting herself and the thrill of her flight, she was suddenly overtaken by a feeling of hopelessness at her task. From this vantage, looking out over the massive expanse of wilderness below them, she thought, for the first time, that she might never find her brother. As if for comfort, she hugged the eagle’s neck tightly and buried her head into his feathers.
And so she did not see the coyote archer.
She did not see him steady himself on the topmost limbs of a great fir and carefully nock an arrow in his bowstring. She did not see him pull the string back taut, and then release. She did, however, hear the singing whi
stle of the arrow as it sped toward its mark, and she felt the weight of the shaft as it hit its target, sinking with a sickening thunk into the breast of the eagle. And she saw the tip of the arrowhead exit from between the General’s shoulders, mere inches from her cheek, its metallic point stained red with blood.
“NO!” she screamed.
The General gave out a single, impassioned squawk and then he was silent, his head dipping low into his breast. His wings, by reflex, contorted around his body, and Prue and the eagle began to plummet from the air.
Prue, in absolute shock, began fumbling with the arrow in his chest, trying to pull it out, but it was held fast. “General!” she yelled desperately. “Don’t! No, no, no!”
His wings suddenly contracted and he began shouting garbled protests to the skies; he beat his wings just enough to keep them from crashing straight down to earth. They skimmed the tops of the trees, Prue clutching to his neck feathers as he violently canted to either direction in flight, threatening to pitch his rider at any turn. The eagle valiantly carried them a good distance from the archer’s position until he finally could labor no more; he gave one last cry, and, his wings falling limp, his body dropped from the air.
Prue shrieked and closed her eyes as they went crashing through the canopy of the trees. The thorny branches of the firs tore at her clothes and skin, attacking her body with the force of a thousand lashes. She pressed her face into the blood-wet back feathers of the eagle to guard from the whipping branches, and she felt the stillness of his body against her cheek. Finally, one stout tree limb broke their forward momentum and they toppled straight down, she and the eagle, cartwheeling through the leaves of the trees until they plowed into the ground, a rain of broken branches showering on them from overhead.
Prue was thrown several feet from the eagle, but luckily landed in the soft, rotted remains of an ancient tree trunk. Her fingers and face stung; she lifted her hands to see them crisscrossed with red scratches and abrasions. Her clothes hung in tatters from her body, and a wide patch of crimson red stained the front of her shirt. The General’s blood, she thought. She jumped up to return to the eagle when she heard the sound of movement in the trees, the distinct crunching noise of footfalls in the undergrowth. She stopped in her tracks, guardedly searching the words around her.